


Rift

by idkwatoputhere, imperatus



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bird/Human Hybrids, Blood and Violence, Civil War, Explosives, Fantasy, Gen, Gun Violence, Guns, How Do I Tag, Magic, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Swords, Trains, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26222104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idkwatoputhere/pseuds/idkwatoputhere, https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperatus/pseuds/imperatus
Summary: An emire on the verge of collapse, a fallen guardian with nothing left to lose, and a group of idiots with a remarkable talent for blowing things up, all in a world filled with magic (and also flammable objects), what could possibly go wrong?
Relationships: Original Character/Original Character
Kudos: 2





	1. Arc 1, Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so, anyone familiar with my typical works, this is not one of my typical works, this is an original story that is written by me and some friends. The first ark was made by imperatus, and we are putting this here because we refuse to touch wattpad with a 40 foot pole
> 
> tags will change when i get smart and can add tags

Milo stepped off of the train and took in his surroundings, he was finally here, the imperial capital, the center of power in both Primaria and Secondarius, and the headquarters of the Guardian Order. A moment later Charly stepped down from the carriage, the two of them had grown close in their years of training, and now they were here, on the cusp of finally joining the ranks of the Guardian order. They seemed like they were merely two travelers that happened to take the same train, Milo being extremely pale and of average height, while Charly was very tall, and had the darker skin tone characteristic of the southwest of the same continent, oh well, it's not like appearance mattered all that much. Milo was jolted out of his thoughts when Charly spoke.

“That train ride left me feeling sicker than a webless, wet spider.” Milo turned, never knowing quite how to respond to ludicrous analogies that were so often spouted by his friend.

“I see, well, we should probably get to the testing facility, we have to be ready for tomorrow.” Milo said, turning back towards the road in front of them.

“Assuming we can actually figure out how to get there.” It took the two the better part of an hour to find the building, a truly massive structure with the crest of the Guardian Order clearly displayed high above the entrance.

Milo stared at the structure and said, “We probably should have known that this was the place.”

  
  
  


Aecca stared out the window as the train rumbled along the tracks, she was astounded by the vast variety of terrain the train had already traversed, she would never get used to the sheer diversity of environments that were present in The Empire, and yet, the words of her superiors rang in her head,  _ don’t disappoint us  _ she had come here with one purpose in mind, but the longer she had stayed, the less she had cared, this place was more of a home to her now than anywhere on Arbreum, all thanks to him, she sighed, she knew that if her father could see her now he would be disappointed, she shuddered, drawing her cloak closer around her. The train was slowing, and she saw the walls of a vast city pass her window, this must be it, the imperial capital. She was finally going to take the next step in escaping her old life.

  
  
  


Milo and Charly formally registered for their final test, and moved on to pick up their weapons, Milo returned to his room, and drew his blade, inspecting the shining, polished steel of his longsword, meticulously searching for any damage that may have occurred during transit, when he was satisfied that the weapon was unharmed, he sheathed it, he had always enjoyed the flashy technique that came with swordplay, even when he was young, he would watch exhibition matches between prominent members of the Guardian Order, that was what had led him to enter the grueling training necessary to join the organization. He had no Idea why Charly had joined the order, his friend wasn’t one to seek out glory, or to look flashy, preferring the functional versatility of a halberd to the varied techniques of a sword, neither was he one to put any value on an unused artifact, even his armor was purely functional, a segmented chestplate over chain mail, with plate armguards and greaves, and leather protecting the upper legs, it was as heavy as armor could really get without making the user too vulnerable to magic, Milo’s own armor was considered relatively heavy, the Brigandine being a cheaper alternative to the Laminar used by the imperial military, but it was rather light compared to Charly’s considerable protection, but that's besides the point. Milo didn’t care why Charly had decided to join the Guardian order, all that mattered was that Charly was here now. Milo sat down on the bed and sighed, tomorrow, he would see if his dreams would become reality.

The next morning, Milo met up with Charly and proceeded to the gathering room for the aspirants, the room was packed, filled with people from all across Primaria and Secondarius, Humans, Silphs, and even the occasional Avian, all standing around, waiting for the test to officially begin. Almost an hour later, a door on the opposite side of the room slid open, and a man wearing relatively standard Laminar armor stepped in, and addressed the crowd,

“Hello, my name is Victor, and I will be overseeing your test today, as you know, the Guardian Order is an organization created to protect and oversee the use of various magical artifacts, but recently with the awakening of the great enemy, our order has taken on a new mission, to protect all people from the ravages of the void, as such, this test is designed to test your combat aptitude and magical skill, and I would like to make it quite clear that should you proceed with the test, you may well die, if anyone wants to back out now, you may.” A few moments passed, before a voice from across the room spoke.

“I’m not planning on dying anytime soon, count me out.”, then a cascade of voices came as aspirants backed out, in the end, only about half of the original crowd remained. Victor stood calmly at the door, and briefly inspected the remaining aspirants before speaking.

“Those of you that wish to continue with the test, follow me.” Victor turned and walked out of the room, with the remaining aspirants following, they walked down a hallway and entered a vast arena, Victor walked to the center of the arena, and addressed the aspirants.

“Welcome to the first phase of the test, this phase is designed to test your ability to fight in a chaotic environment, this arena is rigged up to be completely controlled through creation magic, you must defeat all opponents while the arena periodically shifts in layout, should I have to pull you out of a situation, you will be eliminated from the test, if everyone understands, then the test will begin momentarily.” there was a moment’s pause, before Victor leapt into the stands, there was a grinding sound, as vast walls raised from the floor, Milo had to quickly leap to the side to avoid being hit by the rising walls, the grinding stopped, only to be followed by a shriek, as numerous, jet black creatures leapt into the arena from small hatches in the walls.

Milo drew his blade, quickly sidestepping a charging creature, before delivering a quick slash to the beast’s side, Charly impaled the next beast with the spearhead of his halberd before slamming the cue of his weapon into a third beast. 

“Voidshards! Don’t let them touch you.” Milo called as he ducked the swiping claws of yet another creature, delivering a thrust through the creature’s skull, taking satisfaction in watching the beast’s body disintegrate, there was a growl behind him, he turned to see the voidshard he had slashed earlier, leaping into the air, it was too late to dodge, and even if he counterstruck, he would still be touched by the void matter, moments before impact there was a flash as Charly’s halberd slammed rear-first into the creature’s spine, pinning it to the floor as it disintegrated, Milo gave a nod of thanks to his friend before checking his surroundings, they had cleared out all of the beasts in their immediate area, but that was sure to not last, Milo backed close to Charly and assumed a ready stance.

  
  
  


Aecca moved with practiced grace dodging blow after blow from a voidshard before spotting an opening and driving her right hand side-sword into the beast’s torso, she heard a scraping beside her, turning and slashing her left hand blade through a second creature, leaving both to disintegrate, only for another grinding sound to raise itself over the din of the beasts and aspirants, the ground beneath her gave way as it rose to form a new wall, Aecca lost her balance, and began to fall, she twisted her body, and spread her wings, allowing her momentum to build up lift before pulling up, and zipping through the air, slashing at voidshards as she passed them, she pulled into the air, and sheathed her swords, instead drawing her blaster, an ornately engraved pistol given to her before she departed Arbeum, she took aim, and blasted a voidshard that was moments away from tearing into one of her fellow aspirants, before hearing a shriek from behind her, she spun in the air, to see a winged beast, flying straight towards her.

  
  
  


Milo stepped away from the walls as they fell away, revealing a truly staggering number of voidshards all ready to tear into him. He heard Charly mutter beside him.

“Well isn’t this just an amalgamation of amicability.” The creatures charged, and Milo reached into himself, channeling his mana into his own body before stomping on the ground, creating a series of fractures in the stone that some of the voidshards, unprepared for the sudden shift in terrain, fell into. Charly charged forwards, with Milo close behind, a voidshard leapt at Charly, only to be met with a swift end by its target’s halberd. A second beast was dispatched by a powerful cleave, and a third by a swift thrust. Then the grinding started again.

  
  
  


Aecca dodged as the creature barreled towards her, twisting her body in a rapid turn before firing off a few blasts from her pistol, the beast followed her turn, before ascending upwards, and diving towards her, Aecca tucked in her wings, using her tail to guide a dive of her own, quickly twisting around and firing a shot from her pistol that caught the beast in the eye, Aecca twisted again, spread her wings, and climbed, watching the beast slam into the outer wall of the arena, the grinding sound began again as the walls began to fall, opening the arena completely, a hatch in the arena wall opened, and a truly massive voidshard scuttled down the wall and charged the aspirants, Aecca quickly holstered her blaster, and drew her swords, slightly altering the properties of the creation magic that made up their blades, and swooped towards the beast.

  
  
  


Milo and Charly watched as the massive creature charged into the aspirants throwing them aside like they were nothing, Milo rushed forwards, dodging a swiping leg from the beast, and delivering a slash to the beasts body, only for the blade to skip harmlessly across the voidshards carapace, shooting sparks through the air. The beast turned, raising its limbs to strike, when Charly rushed forwards, driving the head of his halberd into the creature’s underbelly, the beast shrieked, recoiling, then, a flash went by overhead, and a burst of magical energy enveloped the beasts head, the creature collapsed, and began to disintegrate. Victor leapt down from the stands, landing gracefully in the center of the arena, and addressed the remaining aspirants, “Well done, you have passed phase one of your final test, follow me, and we shall begin phase two.”

  
  
  


Slivr watched as the aspirants left the room from his perch in the rafters, once the arena was empty, he dropped down, snapping his fingers, Slivr opened a portal below him, and prepared for his landing. Moments later, Slivr came through the portal, skidding briefly before stopping, he stepped forwards, and kneeled behind a tall figure that was looking out a window at the streets below. “Everything is progressing as you predicted, Lord Kyron, Victor was the one to oversee the tests, and phase two is beginning as we speak.” Kyron turned, locking eyes with Slivr before responding, “Good, if all continues to go well, I will soon eliminate the daemon lurking within my old order, Slivr, continue to monitor the tests, and make sure our target is alone during the third phase, we cannot allow this opportunity go to waste.” Slivr turned, and opened another portal, saying over his shoulder as he left “As you wish, Lord Kyron.”


	2. Arc 1, Chapter 2

Victor moved to the edge of the arena, pressed his hand onto a block of stone in the wall, and stood back as the adjacent wall section slid into the floor, revealing the next room. The room was built as a terminal, with rails running into the room through a tunnel, and a variety of areas for people to sit, buy various items, and wait, however the room was dominated by the chrome plated streamlined train sitting on the tracks in the center of the room. Victor headed directly for the frontmost car on the train, motioning for the Aspirants to follow him as he boarded. Milo, Charly and the other aspirants did as such, and once they had crowded into the first few cars, Victor’s voice rang clearly throughout the train.

“The second stage is not set within the headquarters, as it is a test of your ability to secure and keep hold of an important item in a hostile environment, and as such it will take place at a guardian order facility far older than this headquarters. As such this may be a long trip, I implore you to consider your seating choices well, I’ll explain the test further once we’re underway.”

Charly muttered under his breath “this ride’s gonna be ridiculously, redundantly, revolting.” as he and Milo sat down, upon hearing this, Milo immediately reconsidered his seating choices, he had almost forgotten his friend’s often violent motion sickness that occurred whenever Charly took a train, but before he could move, he heard the distinct noise of the train’s steam whistle, and felt the car lurch forwards,  _ I swear to god if you vomit on me Charly, you will never hear the end of it _ .

  
  
  


Aecca silently cursed as the train began to move, she would never get used to the artificial movements of the vast machines, though she supposed the steam locomotives were far closer to being truly alive than other devices created through the union of human ingenuity and creation magic, there was nothing like a train on Arbreum, there was no point, flying was faster, and the avians never needed to move goods in the quantities that The Empire expected its vast system of railroads to carry daily. She fidgeted her wings uncomfortably, the seats weren’t designed with Avian comfort in mind, it made sense, Avians were a rarity in The Empire, and what few there were flew rather than pay for train tickets, but the worst part of the seats by far was the fact that in order to sit facing forwards, she had to sit on her tail, painfully pulling on the feathers in doing so, it wasn’t long before she began to sit sideways on the seat, sparing her wings and tail in exchange for discomfort in her legs, she was thankful for the distraction when Victor began to speak again.

“The second phase of the test consists of two phases, the first stage will take place in the Origin Forest, and the second stage will take place within the Artificer’s Fortress, both will be equally dangerous, and you cannot expect the test’s overseers to save you from a dangerous situation, however to best prevent any deaths there are a few rules that aspirants must follow within each stage. During stage one, Aspirants must find a key and make their way to the center of the forest to enter the fortress, during this process, aspirants may form teams among themselves, however these teams may consist of no more than five members, there are five keys total, meaning that at most only twenty-five of you will make it to the third phase of the test, aspirants may take keys from other teams, by force if necessary, there are other threats in the Origin fortress which may pose a problem beyond even the other teams. Once the aspirants have entered the Artificer’s Fortress and begun stage two, they must make their way through the threats within to reach the center, once at the center, you will be greeted by the test’s overseers and taken to the third phase. Phase two of the test may well take several days, and as such, outdoor gear will be provided to aspirants, the test will begin immediately upon our arrival.” 

  
  
  


Milo recoiled slightly as Charly made yet another gross throat noise, praying that this one wasn’t just the prelude to Charly puking all over both of their seats. Needing a small break from the sense of impending doom that grew greater with each turn in the rails, Milo stood, and began to make his way towards the back of the train. As Milo reached the end of the car, he saw a female. The first thing he thought was  _ short _ . He then noticed the reddish brown wings, signifying an avian. She had set white hair that was shoulder length, but seemed a bit longer in the back. It was a strange hairstyle to him, he didn’t really understand why one would keep it at the strange uneven length. He looked at the girl’s face and her piercing yellow eyes stared back at him.

“Uhm, it’s kinda rude to stare like that,” the girl's voice brought him back from his thoughts. 

“Sorry, it's weird to see an avian girl around here, and I kinda got distracted by how short you are.” 

She stared for a couple seconds. “Wow, ok, I guess you didn’t forget that staring is rude, you are just naturally good at it.” Milo stared for a couple seconds.

“I mean, I’m just speaking the truth, dude, why take it so personally?” he asked, clearly rather confused.

“I don’t know you? How can you possibly be this blunt and have any friends?” She seemed actually confused.

Milo muttered to himself, “If Charly were not about to puke his guts out, he would totally be saying I told you so right now…” 

The avian looked at Milo for a second before speaking. “So, he does have friends,” she seemed rather smug. “

“You know what, fuck you!” Milo replied immediately.

“What? No!” the avian deadpanned.

“You know what I meant, fuck right off!” Milo cried, storming off back to his seat with Charly, ready to rant.

Charly listened quietly, other than the disgusting throat noises, and when he finished, looked Milo right in the eyes. “That was rude, she wasn’t a human, and probably didn’t understand human’s ways of speaking, for all we know, she thought you were actually trying to slither serpent like betwixt her twiddle sticks,” Charly said before gagging, “you should apologise to heurp- after we get off.”

It was a few more minutes of Milo fearing for the quality of his experience in the test before the train gradually stopped, pulling into a small, somewhat overgrown station that clearly hadn’t seen proper maintenance in quite a while. Victor was already standing in the center of the platform when Milo and Charly stepped off of the train. It took approximately 0.0001 seconds for Charly to spot the Avian, a bit slow considering his track record of finding whoever Milo had managed to offend via a sheer incapability to use subtlety in conversation, and he quickly dragged Milo over to apologize.

“I’m sorry, I thought you would have understood the expression, and got frustrated.”

  
  
  


Aecca stared at the single bluntest person she had ever interacted with, was he actually apologizing, it took a moment for her to respond.

“It’s fine, I looked back on it, and assuming that your exclamation at the end was a figure of speech, the whole thing was honestly pretty funny.” the blunt human nodded, before turning and saying to his friend.

“Come on, let's go and see what Victor has to say.” Aecca followed them at a distance, standing at the edge of the crowd, flexing her wings to get rid of the lingering stiffness from the train ride. A few seconds later, Victor was joined at the center of the station by a woman clad in leather armor, her pauldrons adorned by the emblem of the guardian order, a gauntlet wreathed in arcane power, Victor nodded to acknowledge her arrival before speaking.

  
“This is Mercia, she will be aiding me in the task of overseeing the second phase of the test, follow her instructions until the test begins, I must take my leave for now, I sincerely hope you don’t see me again until the end of the test.” With that, Victor leapt away, leaving the station. Mercia took a moment to watch him go, before turning to the aspirants   
“Alright kids, let's get this show on the road!”


	3. Arc 1, Chapter 3

The applicants followed Mercia out of the station and along a small dirt path until they came to a fence with a large metal gate, where Mercia stopped, turned, and addressed the aspirants once again. “Once you go through this gate, the second phase of the test will begin, there will be a one hour grace period in which no combat is permitted between aspirants, this is to allow for teams to distance from each other and avoid a bloodbath by the gate, I advise you take advantage of it, with that said, you may pick up your equipment and prepare to begin.”

Mercia swung her arm outwards and gestured to a pile of weapons and camping equipment. Milo hadn’t seen them when the group had arrived, and given the reactions of the other aspirants, nobody else had either, Charly was the first to move rooting through the pile of equipment to retrieve his halberd and the backpack it had been placed between the straps of, it didn't take long for the rest of the aspirants to move, Milo retrieved his longsword and pack, he turned to see the avian girl carefully affixing a pair of side-swords to her belt, one and then the other, before affixing a second strap from each sheath to her thighs, the end result being that the swords were rigidly held against her legs, with their sheaths facing straight up That can’t be very convenient to draw from. He thought as he turned his attention to affixing his own sword to his hip. On second thought, it would be more inconvenient to walk with.

Aecca carefully strapped her holstered blaster underneath her left arm, and then stared at the backpack, there was no way she would be able to wear it considering the goddamn gigantic wings that protruded from her back and enabled her to fly, why did I expect the Guardian Order, an organization that primarily operates within The Empire to use a carrying method that avians can conveniently use, for [angry bird expletive]’s sake, the packs are even small so a silph can use it, what the [angry bird expletive]. Aecca was snapped out of her internal angry rant when Mercia called out “The gate is now open, your one hour grace period begins now!”

The aspirants immediately rushed around her, rushing along the trail and splitting up either alone or in small groups, Aecca looked around in a panic hoping that at least one other person had been late to move, there was a tap on her shoulder, and she turned around, hands instantly shooting to the hilts of her swords, only to see the extremely blunt human’s friend standing there, he put his hands up as she turned, not the most non-threatening gesture considering the massive halberd in his hand, but it was a start.

“We should probably team up considering that we’re the last ones, it would be dangerous to go solo or even in a team of two, it would be bad to get caught out by a team of five.”

Aecca was averse to teaming up with a person who was physically incapable of subtlety, afterall it would be bad if he spouted their strategy in the middle of the forest, but she didn’t have much of a choice, the three of them were the last ones in the clearing and the human that approached her had a point, it would be nearly impossible to escape a group of five if she was caught alone, and if she teamed up with these humans, at the very least she would have a pair of decoys to use should they end up in a bad situation.  
“It’s not like I have much of a choice, lets go.” Aecca called as she tossed her backpack to the human standing in front of her as she ran off.  
“I can already tell that she’s gonna be a handful of haphazard half-hats.” the human muttered before taking off after her.

A day had passed since the team of three had entered the forest, and having managed to escape the attention of the other teams, introductions were exchanged as they set up camp.  
“Aecca? That’s a wack ass name.” Milo stated with characteristic bluntness, only to flinch at the look that Charly gave him, Aecca however seemed completely unphased by the comment.

“Well in the perspective of avians, human names are pretty, as you say, wack.”

Milo nodded, he had never thought of it that way, each race did have their own customs, for example the silph tendency to overwork themselves to the point of collapse, or the tendency of humans to use truly ridiculous means to solve seemingly inane problems. He continued contemplating as he went through the nightly ritual of maintaining his longsword, he barely noticed when Charly informed Aecca that it would be pointless to try to get his attention while he carefully inspected every inch of the blade for any deformation, and corrected any damage he found through the careful application of a whetstone.

Once he was done, he set about the work of camouflaging the camp with creation magic, the result being a dense ring of what appeared to be a mixture of woody bushes, brambles, and other plants that it would be generally unpleasant to search through, of course if someone were to actually make contact with them, it would become apparent that they were merely a magical construct, however, should someone touch them, Milo had made damn sure that that person would receive a nasty surprise via a devious alteration to the properties of the constructs. Should anyone touch them from the outside, the bushes would simply detonate, not only blasting back whoever made contact but making a noise loud enough that it was guaranteed to wake the camp’s inhabitants, even Charly who took the term heavy sleeper to an entirely new level. Satisfied with his work, Milo slipped into his tent, taking no time to fall asleep.

Aecca was awakened by a near deafening bang, bolting upright, she grabbed one of her swords, and slipped out of the tent, Milo was already standing in the center of the camp, sword drawn, Charly half crawled, and half flopped out of his tent, a groggy “wuh happun” escaping his lips, before he saw Milo, shook himself awake and retrieved his halberd. 

All three were on alert, silent as they scanned the edge of the clearing for whoever had made contact with the barrier, but no one made any sign of having seen the source of the disturbance, something caught Aecca’s eye, a silhouette, barely distinguishable from the treeline, Aecca, clenched her sword, and prepared to engage.


	4. Arc 1, Chapter 4

Aecca lunged forwards at the figure, throwing a swift thrust, the figure reacted instantly, leaning so that the blade passed just to their right, and just as Aecca began to pull back her blade, the figure brought down their elbow on her hand, causing her to drop her weapon, Aecca reacted quickly, landing a jab to her opponent’s side with her left hand, before reaching underneath her extended arm with her right, only to meet air Oh right, I left my blaster in the tent, the figure slammed its fist into her face, and as she hit the dirt, she got a good look at it for the first time.  
the thing was nearly transparent, with multiple cuts and scratches visible across its body, its clothes were in similarly bad shape, and it grinned at her as it lowered its hands towards her head, her mind raced as the hands drew closer, then it suddenly made sense, the thing before her was a nightstalker, which meant that if those hands made contact with her then she was in trouble. Aecca grabbed her sword, before flexing her wings behind her, pushing her upwards, and driving her blade straight into the nightstalker’s throat, it stumbled backwards, emitting a choking sound, and collapsed. Aecca turned to check on her companions.

Milo had just landed a devastating slash on a nightstalker, which promptly crumpled to the ground, while Charly was lifting a third one into the air, impaled on his halberd’s spearhead. Aecca heard a rustle in the grass behind her, and barely managed to dodge a vicious strike, she turned, facing her new opponent, the nightstalker lunged forwards, trying to close the distance to the point that Aecca couldn’t effectively utilize her thrust-oriented weapon, only to be met with a swift blow to the face from the pommel of Aecca’s weapon. It stumbled back, and Aecca lashed out in a precise movement, swiping the tip of her blade across the creatures throat, but, just as it crumpled to the ground, another threw a punch from behind, catching her in between the wings, and sending her back into the dirt, Aecca pulled her wings as close to her body as she could, and rolled over, only to let out a shriek as a sharp pain exploded from the base of her tail, she looked at her assailant, seeing a grin of satisfaction on its face, a feather from her tail in its hand, its tip bloody from having been torn out. The nightstalker wasted no time in attempting to grab her, but she kicked upwards, landing a swift hit to the creature’s groin, it howled in pain and stumbled backwards, giving Aecca a moment to get to her feet and drive her sword through its gut. She saw that Milo and Charly were now fighting back to back, warding off blows and throwing well-timed counters in perfect sync.

Aecca herself backed towards them as two more Nightstalkers closed in on her, with only one of her swords, she was having trouble defending against the nightstalkers’ attacks, she managed to drive one off temporarily, but as she backed closer to Milo and Charly, she could tell that they were also coming close to being overwhelmed, she desperately tried to drive off her attackers, but her blows were evaded, she blocked a blow only for the other nightstalker to rear back, she knew there was no way she would be able to block or dodge Aecca prepared herself for the impact, but both nightstalkers crumpled to the ground, a deep cut across their backs. A human she recognized from the crowd of other aspirants stood before her, zweihander resting on his shoulder.

Milo had almost been overwhelmed when a fellow aspirant arrived and quickly dispatched one of the nightstalkers fighting him via a quick blow to the back of the head from his staff, Milo quickly took advantage of the momentary distraction to land a devastating slash across the torso of the other nightstalker he was fighting before turning his attention to those that Charly was fighting.  
Charly warded off one with a quick jab from the cue of his halberd before simply stonewalling a punch from the second, using the time gained by taking the punch to quickly rotate his halberd around, and use the rear blade to pull the nightstalkers feet out from under it, finishing the job with a quick stab, however the other one that he had been fighting lunged forwards in that moment arms outstretched. Milo reacted instantly, channeling mana into himself, he rushed forwards at immense speed, delivering a chop to the nightstalkers back that bisected it. Allowing his mana to dissipate from the concentrated channel, Milo turned to face the newcomer, keeping his sword at the ready. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aecca also maintaining a ready position as she faced a second stranger, if the two of them were part of a full team, drawn by the blast, then Milo’s team was in trouble. He swept his gaze from one of the strangers to the other, what first caught his eye was the way the taller of the two was holding his greatsword, with it resting on his shoulder, he could pretty easily convert it into a guard, but any attack thrown from that position would be obvious, similarly, the shorter one carrying the staff was gripping his weapon near the top end, making any offensive action both awkward and obvious to any opponent, Milo relaxed a little, these two clearly didn’t want to fight. Charly moved his halberd into a rest position similarly easy to convert into a defence, and Aecca lowered her sword so that the point faced downwards. Milo took the initiative and addressed the newcomers,

“Not to seem ungrateful for the help, but why are you here?”

The staff carrying stranger responded with  
“It’s kinda hard to miss a massive explosion in the middle of the night.”

“That’s not what I mean and you, know it.”

“Yeah, yeah, but if we wanted to attack you, why not let the whole nightstalker situation run its course and either attack you after you’ve tired yourselves out, or loot the remains of your camp.”

Charly lowered his halberd to a position resting on the ground before speaking,  
“You have a fair point.”

Aecca sheathed her sword, the newcomer standing ahead of her did the same, sheathing his blade before placing its sling over his shoulder, and Charly slung his halberd over his shoulder in a similar manner, reluctantly, Milo sheathed his longsword, taking a moment to examine the strangers, the one carrying a staff looked like the exact stereotype that all the weebs obsessed with the archipelago off the coast of Secondarius constantly raved about, right down to the conical hat, meanwhile the one carrying the zweihander looked to be from north western Primaria, the weapon alone was an indicator but due to the vast exchange of ideas that had come about due to the rise of The Empire, it wasn’t super concrete, however, the man’s general complexion and clothing made Milo pretty sure, his suspicions were all but confirmed when the man introduced himself.  
“Why don’t we just start this conversation over, My name is Erwin,”  
he gestured to his companion,  
“and this is Takuma.”

Milo immediately began internally kicking himself, Takuma was actually one of the islanders.  
Charly looked between Erwin and Takuma, then spoke,

“Is your team just the two of you?, if so, why don’t you join up with us, no point in just going our separate ways only to end up fighting over keys later on.”

Takuma nodded, “It’s just us, and having a team of five would leave all of us less vulnerable to ambushes.”

“Then it's settled.”  
Erwin declared, not giving anyone a chance to second guess the newly created team.

Aecca awoke early the next morning, her group had moved to Erwin and Takuma’s camp to avoid any other groups attracted by the explosion. She was still uneasy in the camp as she stretched and prepared for the day. Aecca was the first out of the tents, and as such took up the task of standing guard, she briefly considered taking to the air to get a better look at the area, but decided against it, her missing tail feather wouldn’t stop her from flying but it would probably be better to avoid unnecessary flight until her tail was healed.

A few minutes of waiting passed before the rest of the group slowly shuffled out of the tents, Aecca quickly noticed Takuma trying to move behind her without attracting her attention, what is he doing, is this another strange human thing?

“Takuma, not to seem rude or blunt, but what are you doing?”

Takuma froze, stared at her for a few seconds, then finally responded looking somewhat embarrassed,

“I apologise, I was just curious as to how avian clothing works with the whole wings and tail thing.”

“Oh.”

Aecca turned around, she had forgotten how few avians actually ever left Arbeum, after all there was no harm in satisfying her teammate’s curiosity.

“We have cutouts in the backs of our shirts, a large one for our wings, and a smaller one for our tails, some pants also have a cutout for a tail in the waistband, but that’s more common in guy’s clothes.”

Takuma nodded as Aecca turned back around

“An elegant solution, but honestly, I don’t know what I was expecting.”

Milo moved to meet them, backpack slung over his shoulder, 

“Less talking about clothing, more packing.”

Takuma nodded, and moved to begin packing back up. Aecca looked across the camp, seeing that Charly had already packed up his gear, and that Erwin was starting the process of collapsing his tent. Sighing, Aecca turned to begin the process of packing up her own belongings, once she packed everything back up, she was once again confronted with the problem of how she was supposed to carry a backpack with her wings in the way. She was about to give up and just awkwardly carry it in her arms when Charly walked over.

“I can carry that if you want me to.”

“Well it's not like I have much of a choice considering these.” Aecca flexed her wings as she spoke.  
Charly nodded, then took her backpack, and slung it over one shoulder, and his own over the other, before heading back to the clearing and picking up his halberd. Aecca walked over, and before long they had set out.

Milo led the way as they trekked through the dense forest. It had taken almost an hour of convincing (read: begging) for him to finally agree to use his longsword as an impromptu machete, clearing the group’s way through the forest. while Charly, Erwin, and Milo himself could have easily pushed through the forest due to their relatively heavy armor, Aecca and Takuma would risk scratches or other injuries due to their comparatively light attire. Aecca’s wings especially were a consideration, due to their size it would be easy to snag feathers and scratch the wings themselves if Milo wasn’t careful about clearing the brush, and so it went on for hours, Milo muttering about his poor sword or complaining about how much maintenance it would require after they were out of the forest. 

The sun was just passing the center of the sky when the group came to the edge of a clearing, at the center of which stood a small stone structure, overgrown and worn with age, Milo was about to step out into the clearing when Aecca threw her arm in front of him, 

“Someone’s in there!” she whispered urgently.

Milo was surprised he hadn’t seen or heard anything, but sure enough a cloaked figure exited the shrine, spinning an aged bronze key around his finger. He walked around towards a path, raising his free hand to the side of his head as he moved.

“I’ve obtained the third key,” the figure paused before speaking again,

“I’ll be there before sunset, don’t worry, I doubt whoever set off that explosion last night will have made it all the way here, alright, I’ll meet you there.”

The cloaked man left the clearing, heading along the trail.

“We need to stop him from getting to wherever he’s going, his team clearly has multiple keys, and plans to be the only ones to make it through phase two.”  
Takuma whispered urgently, Aecca nodded, and then silently held out her hand, a thin line extended from the tip of her index figure, barely perceptible, it crept its way forwards, moving just faster than the cloaked figure, winding around to the key, before wrapping itself around the loop on the keys handle, and yanking upwards, tearing the key from the cloaked man’s grip and pulling back along its trail rapidly and bringing its keys into Aecca’s hand.

“Well now that we have the key we should probably run.” she said, and the group tore off through the trees running in a random direction in order to simply create distance.

Slivr turned rapidly as the key was wrenched from his grasp, seeing the group running away, before turning back towards the path, it didn’t matter that they had taken the key, all he needed to do was to ensure that the daemon hiding among the guardians was p


	5. Arc 1, Chapter 5

The sun was dipping towards the horizon by the time the group stopped to rest and set up their camp. The ring of fake bushes had been fully raised by the time Aecca had pitched her tent, she decided to leave the rest of her gear packed, it would be too much work the next morning, and they had to move quickly and enter the fortress early the next day.

They had so far managed to avoid conflict with the other aspirants, and if they wanted to keep it that way getting to the relative safety of the fortress was a priority, especially since the team that was trying to monopolize the keys would probably be gunning for them.  
She turned to see Takuma watching Milo maintaining his longsword, she decided to go over.

“What, you curious about how he maintains his sword?”

Takuma turned quickly, startled,

“No, I’m just surprised that he carries it so openly.”

Aecca was confused, afterall the test thus far had been rather hazardous.

“Why wouldn’t he carry it openly?”

Takuma looked at her for a moment before lifting his staff from the ground, before flicking its side about 3/4ths up the staff, Aecca saw a small latch come undone, almost impossible to discern when closed, and Takuma pulled out a straight, single edged sword, its bulky hilt had made up the top of the staff, Takuma turned back to her and spoke.

“In my homeland, those of lower class are prohibited from carrying swords and other bladed weapons, it became law when The Empire took over. But there is a workaround, someone else loaning the weapon to you, in my case, it was my teacher who gave me my sword. He recognized my talent, and let me learn, but I still have to hide the blade despite the loophole since the imperial authorities don’t really care about technical ownership.”

Aecca was taken aback, she had been under the impression that the laws were universal across the entire empire, Arbeum had universal laws after all, Milo spoke up, having put away his longsword.

“It's pretty common for The Empire to limit weapons in one way or another in newly acquired territories, it almost never lasts longer than ten years, but in the end it's up to the local governor whether or not to lift the restrictions.”

Takuma nodded before responding,

“The Empire arrived on our islands seven years ago, in the end we willingly joined, afterall there was no way we could resist the legions. Some are bitter, especially since the Silphs in Helphastos got to keep their independence, I couldn’t care less, afterall the great enemy appeared only a year after the empire took over, and without the presence of the legions we probably wouldn’t have survived the initial waves.”

Aecca placed her hand on Takuma’s shoulder, not really knowing what to say.

“That’s rough.”

Charly walked into the clearing,   
“While this conversation is fascinating, we need to be up and moving early tomorrow.”

Thankfully nothing disturbed the camp that night, and Milo woke up early that morning, and immediately set about taking down his tent and completely packing back up. It wasn’t long before the whole team was standing in the center of the camp, ready to go, Charly having once again volunteered to take Aecca’s backpack. They were about to set out when Erwin spoke up,

“Does anyone actually know which way the fortress is?.”

Milo cursed internally, he couldn’t see the structure through the dense forest, were they going to fail the challenge simply by getting lost?

“I can find out.”

Aecca’s voice snapped Milo back into reality, of course, they had an Avian. Aecca took a short running start before taking off. It was a few minutes before she returned to the clearing, landing, and pointing into the forest.

“It's not too far that way, if we move quickly we can probably get there before noon.”

And so they set out, carefully navigating the dense forest, keeping alert as they moved through the forest. Aecca’s estimation seemed to be pretty accurate, and a few uneventful hours of hiking later, they arrived at the sheer stone walls of the Artificer’s fortress.

They slowly circled around the structure, until they came to a small section of the wall that was slightly discolored as compared to the rest of the wall, there was a small gap between the bricks. Aecca stopped and looked into it, before inserting the key, Milo didn’t have time to question her, as the discolored section of wall slid downwards into the ground just as she withdrew the key.

The team entered and as soon as Takuma, the farthest back entered, the section of wall slid back into position. After taking a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness, the group continued down the hallway until they came to a lit room. There was a desk in the center of the room, and Mercia was sitting there, she looked at them before speaking.

“So this is the second team to enter, alright people, welcome to the Artificer’s fortress, while in here each team will have to complete one of five courses, these courses are significantly less dangerous in the traditional manner. However, if you set off any of the traps along each course, you will be immediately eliminated, and nobody wants that. So you’ll have to think carefully before taking any action, furthermore, if one member of the team is eliminated in this way, the entire team is eliminated, so you’ll have to work together in order to make it to phase three. Best of luck.”

Mercia tapped a stone on the wall behind her desk, and a section of wall opened up revealing another hallway. Erwin moved forwards, before snapping his fingers, causing a beam of light to radiate from his outstretched hands, illuminating the hallway, and causing a series of tripwires to shine, reflecting the light. The group carefully navigated the hallway, Erwin’s light picking out each and every tripwire.  
The group then made it to a large room, the floor right at the entrance was smooth, but it soon gave way to a series of tiles, with another smooth section of flooring on the opposite side just before a solid wall, some of the tiles were marked and some weren’t.  
Milo crept forwards, he looked carefully at the marked tiles, it was difficult to tell at first, but there were a few variations of the markings, all had a large, stylized S in the center, and a smaller, fine outline around it. He took a step back and looked at the general layout, each row had a pair of marked tiles, it seemed like they had to be depressed in a specific order, however before he could figure that out, he had to find out whether or not the unmarked tiles were safe.

He reached out with his mana, letting it flow out into the world, before making it coalesce into a small object with weight about even to his own. It was taxing to create something so dense but it didn't particularly matter, afterall his mana level wouldn’t be a pressing issue when the primary threat in the fortress consisted of traps. The resulting construct dropped onto an unmarked tile, Milo ready to allow the construct to disperse at the first sign of any reaction from the tile, but nothing happened. He turned back to his team, ready to explain what he had found out, only to be met with them all staring at him questioningly, the only exception being Charly who had learned that once Milo started working on any sort of puzzle there was no pulling him out until he finished.

“The unmarked tiles are safe, I think that once we depress the marked ones in the correct sequence a door will open on the other side, and that we’ll be eliminated if we get it wrong.”

Milo didn’t wait for them to react, he turned his attention back to the tiles, if he could just figure out what the outlines were, some of them were repeated later on, the s had some kind of importance, it was the only thing that all the marked tiles had in common, but what did it mean, the letter s was significant somehow, but how, what did the S signify, Milo was ripped from his thoughts when Charly tapped him on the shoulder.

“I think I know what the sequence is, the outlines are The Empire’s original provinces, the ones that joined before it even became the empire, the letter S is from The Empire’s original name, The Scipii Kingdom, so the sequence must be the order that each province joined.”

Charly turned to the rest of the group,   
“Does anyone have any other ideas?”

He called out, no one answered. Charly stepped onto the unmarked tiles, before stepping on the tile further to the right, it slid into the floor and gave a click, Charly continued to the next pair, this time selecting the one further left, then two rights, a left, and another right. Each giving the same reaction. Once Charly had stepped on the last one, the wall ahead of him slid down into the floor, letting the group pass.  
Erwin again provided illumination as they traversed the corridor. Eventually the group came to another room, the room itself was large, but the floor dropped off only a few feet from the entrance, there was a shelf near the center of the platform, on it sat a byzant arquebus, the weapon, clearly crafted by Silph hands, was magnificently complex in its creation, mechanism that allowed it to fire was too complex and took up too much space for it to have the kind of engravings that Aecca’s pistol had, but Silph blasters were far more powerful than anything their Avian derivatives could achieve. In the air over the drop, a small mote of light floated, and as Milo approached the shelf, he saw a small note, and read it aloud.

“Hit the target.”

Aecca shuddered when she heard what they had to do, looking at her team it didn’t seem like anyone else had any experience with a blaster, guess it's up to me. She approached the shelf, carefully picking up the arquebus, letting its weight fall into her arms, as soon as she had picked up the weapon, the orb of light began to dart around the room. Aecca took her time lining up her shot, carefully tracking each move of the orb, she pulled the trigger, the wheel on the side of the weapon spun, sparks flew from the action, the wheel stopped its rotation and the bolt flew from the weapon’s barrel.  
However, the delay of the action had allowed the target to move again, darting out of the way of the shot, the bolt slammed into the opposite wall. Aecca froze, had she just gotten her entire team eliminated? There was a click, and then the section of the floor on the edge fell, reducing the size of the platform. Charly looked down at the drop before stating

“It looks like the trap is triggered by touching the floor, we have as many shots as we want, but every time we miss there’s less platform left for us to stand on.”

Aecca stopped, if it’s triggered by hitting the bottom, that means… Aecca removed the striker from the surface of the wheel, pulling the trigger, and letting off the spring tension. Allowing her to access the firing chamber. She removed the clip from the weapon, it was missing a single bead, but otherwise it was fine.  
She ran to the edge and leapt off, taking flight just as Takuma asked what she was doing, she flew towards the orb of light, gripping the clip in her hands, she cupped her left hand around the front of the clip, and extended her mana through her right, letting it flow from her, taking the form of sparks. The beads of byzant reacted to the sparks, unleashing a powerful blast of energy, nailing the orb of light. Never show weakness Aecca.

The orb of light pulsed green, and sections of the floor raised up, forming a bridge, Milo watched Aecca land, she tossed the clip next to the arquebus on the floor, her left hand casually placed within her pocket. Milo turned, and crossed the bridge, not noticing Aecca grit her teeth behind him.

AN: Yes, I did rip the third trap directly from the Clone Wars episode The Box. No, I don’t feel bad at all, it's a good episode.


	6. Arc 1, Chapter 6

The bridge led to a short hallway that opened into a warmly lit room, Victor sat at a small desk in the center. He looked up as they entered, 

“Congratulations, all of you have passed the second phase of the test, you’ll be sent back to the headquarters to await the rest of the teams to finish phase two. Phase three will begin the day after the last team completes this phase. Now, if you would hand over the key to the fortress. I’ll send you on your way.”

Aecca tossed the key to him, keeping her left hand in her pocket the whole way, Milo didn’t pay much attention to it. Afterall, it was probably some avian thing he was unaware of, and he didn’t want to seem rude. Milo himself was completely unaware of how little he considered avoiding rudeness, and so the gravity of that particular thought was completely lost to him.

Victor stepped forwards, placing his hands on either end of what appeared to be a full length mirror, the image on the mirror’s surface shifted to a view of the waiting room at the Guardian forces headquarters where the test had began, Victor released the mirror, and gestured to it,  
“Step right through, it’d be a waste to have to take a train for five people.”  
Milo stepped through immediately, happy to evade the prospect of sitting in the general vicinity of Charly on a train, and he was in the waiting room, the rest of his team filed through shortly afterwards, and they split up, each heading to their own lodgings, and it wasn’t long after arriving back in his room that Milo left to go find a smith to do proper repairs on his longsword.

Aecca lay back on her bed as she examined her left hand, the flesh was badly burned, and blood still oozed from between the blisters. Who could have guessed that using your unprotected hand to channel a byzant blast would be a bad idea. She sighed, what would Razat say if he could see me now? Aecca knew exactly what Razat would say, he would call her an idiot for needlessly hurting herself again, before laughing and treating the injury. Many similar situations had happened while she was living in Helphastos. It had been Razat that had first told her about the Guardian Order, and so here she was.

Aecca pulled herself back to reality, and sat up, moving to her gear, which was haphazardly piled in the corner. from the pile, she removed a small first aid kit, narrowly avoiding the pile’s total collapse via a quick repositioning of one of her swords with her foot. She opened the kit with her teeth before setting it down on a table and withdrawing a roll of bandages with her right hand, she began to carefully apply the bandages, letting her mind wander as she did so, there had been a reason why she had hidden her injury from her teammates, afterall, as of the moment that phase two ended, they were no longer a team, and she might have to fight them in the last phase of the test, an eventuality she hoped wouldn’t come to pass, but a possible one nonetheless. Aecca sighed again as she returned to her bed, she would need to be well rested in case the third phase began the next day.

Milo awoke early the next day, he looked over to the other bed, and to the surprise of absolutely no one, Charly was still asleep. Milo used the time granted by this to get changed, and ready his equipment. As he passed in front of the door to the room, he saw a small note that had been slipped underneath the door, he picked it up, and read it.  
“Phase three will begin at noon today, the last team finished later in the day, meet in the waiting room, further instruction will be given there  
-Victor”  
Milo turned and prepared himself for the arduous task of waking Charly up.

Aecca prepared quickly after reading her copy of the note, and just before she headed for the waiting room, she slid on a pair of loose-fitting leather gloves, wincing as she slid the glove over her burned hand. On the way to the waiting room she bumped into Takuma and Erwin, and they met up with Milo and a still rather groggy Charly, who had recently obtained a cup of a nondescript hot liquid that was presumably caffeinated.

They stood together in awkward silence for several minutes, there were ten people other than them in the waiting room, which meant that only three full teams had made it through phase two. Right as the clock on the wall opposite the room’s entrance struck 12:00, Victor strolled through the entrance, and took up a spot in the center of the room. Addressing the aspirants,

“Congratulations to all of you for making it to the third and final phase of the test, if you’ll follow me, we shall begin.”

Victor walked to the wall on the right side of the room’s entrance, and pressed on one of the stones, it slid into the wall, and a moment later, a section of wall slid into the floor. Revealing a set of stairs, Victor ascended slowly and the aspirants followed, the staircase led to the stands of the arena in which phase one of the test had taken place. Along the upper wall were several display cases, within each sat a weapon, and even with Aecca’s limited ability to sense mana, she could feel the magical power pulsing from each blade. Across the section of stands lay a box, presumably where Victor had controlled the moving walls during the first phase.

Victor crossed the stands and knocked on the door, it swung open, and Mercia exited, she had a kite shield strapped to her left arm, it was adorned with a purple and black pattern with the crest of the guardian order in the center of its widest section. She approached the aspirants and then spoke.

“Alright kids, since an odd number of you got through phase two, there’s a bit of a twist on this phase. We’ve been keeping a close eye on you throughout the first two phases, and we have a pretty good idea as to where everyone stands. So, the top aspirant will have a choice, they can either take a bye, or fight me, and should they beat me, they will immediately pass the test, but should they lose, the next person without an opponent will be given the same choice, and so on until we have an even number of participants. Otherwise this will go on like any other dueling tournament, each participant will be given a number, and the participants for the current match will be displayed up there.” 

Mercia gestured to a panel of glass on the opposite side of the arena before continuing.

“Before a match starts, the participants will make their way to opposite sides of the arena, and when instructed to, they will begin the match. Participants may use any weapons and/or magic at their disposal to deal with their opponent. The match will end when one of three conditions are met, one, one of the participants surrenders, two, one of the overseers stop the match, or three one of the participants die. The winner in the first and third is whoever is left standing, and the overseer that stops the match in the second scenario will declare a winner.”

Victor walked between the aspirants, handing each one a numbered tag. Milo got the number 6, while Aecca got 7, Charly got 8, Takuma was 9, and Erwin was 10. The cloaked man that they had stolen the key from in the second phase was number 4. Mercia walked to the edge of the stands before turning around.

“Now, Number 11, I believe you have a choice to make.”

Number 11 was a burly man, as tall as Charly, but significantly more bulky, he towered over Mercia as he spoke,

“I’ll fight you, no point in wasting time on these weaklings.”

Mercia nodded,

“Looking to just get this over with eh, ok, I’ll make sure this fight is quick.”  
Mercia said as she walked over to the edge of the arena, before lifting her hand, the walls within the arena raised, forming two sets of stairs, one leading to each end of the arena. Mercia descended one and the aspirant the other. Once both had reached the bottom of the staircases, Mercia made a gesture of lowering her hand, and with the movement, the stairs receded. Victor’s voice rang throughout the arena,

“You may begin.”

Number eleven charged at Mercia, swinging a large, heavy mace at Mercia’s right side, then, it was over. Mercia stepped forwards, bringing her arming sword up in a quick slash across the aspirant’s arm, before slamming her shield into her opponent’s torso, knocking him to the ground, she then pointed her arming sword at her opponent’s throat. Number eleven looked up, before speaking,

“I surrender, it’s clear I don’t stand a chance against you.”

Mercia nodded, sheathing her sword before raising the stairs and proceeding back up into the stands, and thus, the final phase of the test began.

Milo watched the next match, carefully analyzing each fighter, the fighters were impressive, but he doubted that either of them would be all that much of a threat when push came to shove. The swordsmanship was simple, not bad, but basic, and the spear user was far too emplaced in her forms, too committed to the manuals, she was too scared to improvise.

Milo sighed, he had hoped that at least one of his teammates from the second phase would have been called at this point, it would suck to have to fight one of them in round one, Milo watched as the aspirant wielding a shortspear slammed the shaft of their weapon into the head of their opponent, prompting Mercia to call the match.

Milo directed his attention to the glass panel, watching as the numbers appeared, 10 and 15. Erwin and a small, nervous looking girl with an arming sword clenched in her fist. Once the match began it was clear that Erwin was going to win, he quickly parried the girl’s first attack, using the much greater mass of his weapon to pin the arming sword to the ground before simply pummeling the girl, the match was called as soon as Erwin knocked her over. But Milo had noticed something, the way that Erwin handled his weapon, it was sloppy, he clearly relied on being physically stronger than his opponent to slam his way through their guard with brute force. That particular tactic would fail miserably should he ever fight someone of his rough level of physical output.

After Erwin returned to the stands, Milo turned his attention to the glass panel, the numbers for the next match appeared, 6 and 3, Milo checked the leather straps holding his bracers in place, they, when combined with his large pauldrons provided full arm protection and it would be bad news if they came off mid-fight. After doing so, Milo headed down the stairs and into the arena. 

Aecca watched as Milo descended into the arena, this would be interesting, she had yet to see him fight against another armed opponent, but her interest in the fight was moreso a distraction from her worry about having to fight with the current condition of her left hand. There was no way she would be able to use both of her swords, hopefully she would be able to use her mobility against whoever she faced. She shifted her focus back to the arena. Right as the signal was given to begin. Milo rushed forwards, bringing his blade down in a quick slash at his opponent’s shoulder, his opponent, a relatively large human male that carried a similarly large axe, the make of which was unfamiliar to Aecca, dodged to the side, jabbing the end of the axe’s handle at Milo’s head. Milo reacted immediately, ducking under the blow and slashing at his opponent’s right side, the axe wielding human quickly stepped back, barely managing to evade the tip of Milo’s blade, but Milo didn’t let up. He continued to advance, throwing a flurry of quick slashes that battered his opponent’s guard, at the end of which, Milo feinted another fast slash from above, before quickly pulling back his blade and throwing a powerful slash from his right side. His opponent almost fell for it, nearly bringing his weapon too far up to block the follow up slash, however, through a quick reaction he managed to quickly pull down the handle of his axe, redirecting the force of Milo’s slash, and pushing the blade far off center, then, the axe wielder brought his axe around for a counterattack on Milo’s open left side. However, instead of trying to go against the momentum created by the parry by bringing his longsword across his body, Milo instead went with it, releasing his left hand from the longsword, and rotating around in a clearly magically enhanced spin, trusting in his positioning and armor to defend against the blow, the axe landed at an odd angle, bouncing off Milo’s pauldron, and falling uselessly to the side. Milo brought his blade within an inch of his opponent’s throat. At that point, Mercia called the match, and Milo walked back up to the stands. With no more damage from the fight than a small cut in the deep purple fabric covering on his pauldron (for those of you who don’t know, a brigandine is made up of many metal segments riveted to a cloth covering, and is less protective, but cheaper and more flexible than plate mail, it also looks pretty good since it can be any color you want it to be).

Aecca sighed, her analysis of the fight would be pretty inaccurate, Avians were physically weaker than humans, and as such almost never made use of weapons meant to chop or make use of blunt force, so her knowledge of what was going on in the fight was not going to fully encompass what had happened, but she had managed to follow enough to know that she didn’t stand a chance against Milo with her burned hand. She turned her attention to the glass panel, it was only a moment before the numbers appeared, 7 and 13, Aecca readied herself as best she could, before heading into the arena. Her opponent was a man of average height wearing lamellar armor, the man drew a short, curved sword, a kopis, judging by the shape of the handle.  
“Begin”  
Victor’s voice rang out over the arena, and her opponent charged, leaping into the air, and bringing their blade back, intending to land nearly on top of Aecca, a move that would ensure a devastating thrust, Aecca wouldn’t allow herself to be eliminated that quickly, she sidestepped, counterattacking with a swift thrust aimed for her opponent’s exposed side, however the blade skidded across the surface of the lamellae. the man turned the moment he landed, launching a downwards chop aimed at Aecca’s shoulder, Aecca knew that her sidesword was too far out of position to intercept the blow, thinking fast, she jumped sideways, catching herself with her wings as the slash passed through where she had been a moment before, Aecca pushed herself up, landing lightly on one foot before executing a swift kick to her opponent’s stomach. The man stumbled, and Aecca took the opportunity to follow up with a slash across her opponent’s chest, however again, the blade simply skidded across the surface of her target’s armor. She had known going in that lamellar might pose a problem to her, it was relatively popular among the people of eastern primaria and western secondarius, and it was highly resistant to the kind of attacks favored by the various combat styles taught at the Arbeum Academy, she would need to be careful if she wanted to win this. A quick slash from the kopis forced Aecca to block, before throwing a counterattack, which in turn, was blocked, and so on they went, in an intense display of swordsmanship, Aecca both occasionally landing glancing blows, and being forced to dodge the occasional blow that made its way through her guard. Aecca blocked a wide slash, twisting her wrist and redirecting the force of the attack, throwing the kopis out of position, seizing the opportunity, she lunged forwards, landing a thrust that glanced off her target’s cuirass, sending sparks flying as the blade skidded across the lamellae, she grinned, that's it!. Number 13 turned, thrusting at Aecca’s torso, but Aecca leapt into the air, bringing her blade back into contact with her opponent’s armor, before twisting the hilt of her sidesword, there was a small pinging sound as the blade broke off, Aecca flapped her wings hard, creating as much distance as possible between her and her opponent,

“Kaboom.”

The detached blade of the sidesword detonated, the resulting blast hurling number 13 into the opposite wall of the arena. Aecca landed on her side and tumbled across the ground keeping her wings close to her body in order to prevent any unnecessary damage. Using the last of the momentum to roll to her feet, unharmed aside from the few reddish brown feathers left in the wake of her small trip across the arena. Aecca allowed her mana to flow over the hilt of her sword, recreating the blade of her weapon, before allowing the stabilization crystal embedded in the hilt of the weapon to lock the blade in place, making it far more sturdy than any other construct of creation magic. Mercia called the match at that point, and, not particularly feeling like climbing the stairs, Aecca flew back to the stands, upon her landing Milo rushed up to her.

“Holy shit, I had no clue you were that good with creation magic.”

Aecca was taken aback, was this ridiculously blunt individual actually complimenting her? Milo continued,

“I know you changed the properties of your sword’s blade to cause the explosion, but how did you trigger the detonation?”

Aecca looked at him, Milo had proven himself reasonably adept at creation magic, his exploding bush trick seemed to be rather useful, and besides it didn’t really give Milo any advantage in a potential match against her if she told him.

“I changed the properties of my blade to cause sparks on contact with a different kind of steel between strikes, once I got sparks, all I had to do was make the bottom of my blade brittle and set it to explode on contact with that specific kind of steel, land a hit, and break off the blade.”

Milo took a few seconds before responding

“I see”

Milo had just pulled himself out of his thoughts about potential variations on Aecca’s technique that he could make use of when the next numbers appeared on the board, 8 and 5.

“Good luck.”

Milo called as Charly descended the stairs, he was interested to see what kind of opponent his friend would be fighting, afterall, Charly’s entire style was built around functional versatility. Milo knew the fight wouldn’t be all that flashy, but it was always a little satisfying to watch his friend pick apart an opponent’s fighting style.

However, Charly’s opponent entered the ring, Milo knew that his longtime friend was going to have some trouble, Charly’s opponent was a man clad in the thick robes of a mage trained at one of the Imperial Colleges of Magic, while being trained at a prestigious school wasn’t an exact indicator of skill, that wasn’t the problem, the main issue was that Charly’s armor was too heavy for this situation. Metal conducted mana rather well, and heavy armor could allow for a runaway reaction when hit by magic, the spell running along the surface of the metal and extending its own duration far beyond what would normally be possible, segmentations in the metal would limit the ability of magic to pass between the plates, and layers of cloth or leather could provide some resistance, however it wasn’t a perfect solution to the problem. The best defense against magic was one’s own. The problem with that situation being that Charly had never shown much aptitude for magic. He (assumedly) had magical attunements like anyone else, but Milo had never seen Charly use magic. Milo looked at his friend, but he couldn’t find any sign of worry on his friend’s face.

Victor signaled for the match to begin, and Charly charged forwards, trying to close the distance as quickly as possible, but his opponent would have none of it, hurling a fireball at Charly’s feet, forcing him to dodge to the side, immediately giving up the momentum of the fight. The mage threw a series of quick blasts of fire, extending his hand with each gout of flame. Charly was forced to frantically dodge while trying to advance closer to his opponent, however with each step forwards Charly made, he was forced back two. Slowly being forced back towards the edge of the arena, where he would be boxed in and defeated. At least that’s what Milo thought, Charly reached behind his back, retrieving something that Milo couldn’t quite identify, before being forced to dodge again by another blast of flame, however, after Charly had dodged, Milo couldn't see whatever object he had withdrawn, until, moments later, the mage stumbled back, a throwing knife driven through their extended right hand. Seizing the moment’s opportunity, Charly rushed forwards, closing the distance before his opponent could react, and slamming the mage across the face with the cue of his halberd, knocking them to the ground, Charly calmly bent down, and retrieved his knife, keeping his halberd’s spike within inches of his opponent’s neck as he did so, and after a moment, Victor declared the match to be over. Charly returned to the stands, returning the knife to its place on his belt as he did so.

Takuma turned to the board, it figured that Charly had skills he didn’t show off during phase two. He himself had probably gone too far when he revealed his sword to the rest of the group, afterall, they were a team by necessity. It wasn’t like he'd be working with them after the test, he planned to go back to his home, his status as a member of the guardian order finally letting him openly practice swordsmanship. But before that he had to make it through this last phase of the test. Takuma turned his attention to the glass panel as the next numbers appeared, 9 and 4, all of us in a row huh, now I have to win, afterall I don’t want it to look as if my teammates carried me this far. 

Takuma made his way down into the arena, and took a moment to inspect his opponent before the fight began, he was facing off against the cloaked man his team had stolen a key from during the second phase, and like before, he didn’t carry any obvious weapons, maybe another mage? It didn’t matter, hopefully Takuma would be able to beat him without drawing his sword. Afterall, it was bad enough for him to have shown the weapon to his phase two teammates, better to keep it a secret from those outside that group. As soon as Victor called for the match to begin, Takuma charged forwards, swinging his staff at his opponent’s temple, a blow that would end the match immediately, but he was suddenly redirected, the staff being blocked and thrown aside by an ornately engraved heater shield that had seemingly appeared in his opponent’s arms moments earlier. Takuma lept back, however his opponent didn’t give him a moment to breathe, rushing forwards, before reaching back with their free hand, and striking down with a warhammer that had appeared in a similar manner to the shield. Takuma maneuvered his staff, intercepting the warhammer’s handle, and pushing it aside, following through with the opposite end in a strike that was almost guaranteed to hit, however, his opponent seemed to drop through the floor. Only a split second reaction saved Takuma from a vicious blow from above, shattering the ground where Takuma had just stood, Takuma seized on the opportunity to counterattack, swinging his staff quickly, knocking his opponent forwards, at which point, Takuma finally saw his opponent’s trick. As the cloaked man fell over as a result of the blow, a circular portal appeared beneath him, teleporting him a few feet away from Takuma, allowing the cloaked man to regain his footing. Takuma rushed forwards, swiping his staff at his opponent’s legs, trying to force the man to teleport again, only for the man to jump over the strike, landing mere inches away from Takuma before slamming his shield into Takuma’s face. Takuma stumbled back, barely managing to block the followup blow from the warhammer, and as Takuma threw the warhammer aside, he undid the latch at the upper end of his staff, he had to make as much use of the surprise caused by his weapon change as he could. Takuma drew his sword, hurling his sheath at his opponent, the cloaked man raised his shield, blocking the projectile. Seizing his opportunity, Takuma rushed forwards, delivering a series of quick slashes in a controlled display of technique, each blow testing the guard of his opponent, probing at any weakness in the defense, and just as he managed to slip his blade past his opponent’s shield, the cloaked man vanished. Takuma turned quickly, only to be blindsided by a shield bash, stumbling back, Takuma saw the Cloaked man follow up with a heavy overhand blow, Takuma moved to block, automatically turning his sword to the side, aiming to intercept the warhammer’s handle. But, in his haste, Takuma slightly misjudged his parry, the hammer connected with the spine of his sword. There was a loud pinging noise, and as fragments of metal fell around him, Takuma jumped back, barely avoiding the strike. Son of a bitch.

Slivr grinned in satisfaction as he looked at his opponent’s shattered weapon, the moment his opponent had drawn their sword, he had known his victory was assured, puting substantial training into multiple weapons spread a combatant too thin, weakening their overall technique. No matter, this match gave him a perfect opportunity, all he needed to get the daemon close to him, and this would be perfect. Slivr summoned a portal, teleporting to his opponent, before slamming him across the face with his shield, knocking the poor fool to the ground, before raising his hammer. The best thing I can do for him now is end this quickly.


	7. Arc 1, Chapter 7

Aecca stood, frozen in shock as the cloaked aspirant slammed his hammer into Takuma’s chest. Victor leapt from the stands, and approached Takuma as he lay on the ground, blood oozing from the corner of his mouth, Aecca watched nervously as Victor checked Takuma, she knew that death was a possibility, they all did, but even still Takuma’s opponent had gone too far. Even if the match hadn’t been called yet, he should have given Takuma a chance to surrender. Victor looked to Mercia and shook his head, such a simple motion to confirm that a life had been lost. Aecca forced herself to maintain a straight face, never show weakness. Aecca watched as the lifeless corpse was removed from the arena, before slowly pulling her focus back to the test as the final matches of round one concluded. She needed to stay sharp if she wanted to pass the test, never let your guard down those words had been hammered into her, and it had taken quite a while for her to move past them, but now she saw their wisdom, she had opened herself up too much, now she had to be completely serious, especially now when fights between teammates were inevitable.

Milo tried to calm down as he waited for the first match of round two to begin, his mind racing as he tried to rationalize why the warhammer wielding aspirant had killed Takuma. Every time he did, it always came to the same conclusion, the cloaked man had killed because he could, simply because the opportunity had presented itself, and every time he reached that conclusion Milo simply got more angry. Milo didn’t even register the significance of the numbers that had appeared on the screen until both Erwin and Charly began to descend into the arena.

Two strong fighters wielding large weapons, the zweihander that Erwin carried being so large that it took on properties closer to a polearm than those of a more traditional sword, on the surface it seemed like a close match, but Milo already knew the outcome before the match ever began. The moment the signal to begin was given, Erwin charged forwards, bringing his blade down in a heavy cleave only to be blocked by Charly, twisting his weapon, Erwin attempted to perform the same binding maneuver he had used in his round one match, but Charly quickly pulled his halberd out of the lock, delivering a quick strike to Erwin’s leg with the cue of his weapon before assuming a ready stance. Erwin rushed forwards again, delivering a series of heavy blows, hammering against Charly’s guard, but each blow was stonewalled. Milo could tell that Erwin was getting more frustrated with each strike, slowly increasing the intensity of his offensive, but in the end he was just slamming his head against a brick wall. Charly carefully met each blow with a measured block, never moving further than he had to, and never using more strength than he needed to, simply waiting for an opportunity. That opening would come when Erwin through a clumsy downwards cleave, which Charly met with all his strength, throwing the zweihander far to the right side, before sweeping his halberd around to the left, hooking Erwin’s leg with the rear blade of his halberd, before pulling forwards, dropping Erwin to the floor of the arena. Charly wasted no time in pointing the spike of his weapon at Erwin’s throat, preventing him from getting up, Mercia stepped forwards, and Erwin shouted in reaction. 

“Don’t you dare call this match! If you want me to leave this ring, it’ll either be as the victor, or as a body on the floor!”

Erwin kicked at Charly’s legs, but Charly simply stepped back, moving his grip further back on the halberd’s haft, keeping the point in place, before speaking, his voice calm.

“Just surrender, this match is clearly over, I could have killed you when I parried that blow, but I’m not a proponent of needless death, so, stop wasting everyone’s time, there’s always next year.”

Erwin again tried to force Charly to move his weapon with a kick, but his legs flailed against open air. Erwin shouted at Charly again.

“You don’t understand, I have to do this, I need to pass, after all the work, I finally got to take the test, I want to kill daemons dammit, not to get stopped by some self-righteous prick with a halberd!”

Charly looked down at his beaten opponent, before calmly moving the spike of his halberd closer to Erwin’s neck, his voice still calm as he responded.

“If you went up against the great enemy now, you’d be killed by the first voidshard you encountered that was fast enough to dodge your power blows, you need to refine your technique, you just aren’t ready.”

Tears spilled from Erwin’s eyes as he shouted back,

“Just kill me then, it's not like I have anything I’ll be missing here!”

Charly stared at his opponent, before responding,

“Fine.”

Charly raised his weapon, bringing the spike down in a thrust, that landed mere inches from Erwin’s head, Charly drove the point of his weapon into the ground, before rotating it so that the blunt inside edge of the axehead pinned Erwin against the ground.

“Now there’s no doubt that the match is over.”

Moments after Charly had spoken, Mercia called the match, once freed, Erwin miserably walked out of the arena, not stopping to speak to anyone on his way out. Milo felt kind of bad for Erwin, he had clearly been determined to join The Guardian Order, but in the end, Charly had been right, Erwin relied too heavily on his strength, and it didn’t seem like he even used healing magic to amplify it, had Erwin fought anyone reasonably competent with that school of magic, he would have lost, and possibly died. This was the best outcome for him. Milo directed his attention back to the glass panel. 6 and 4, Milo readied his longsword, he had to keep his anger in check, otherwise his technique would suffer the same way that Erwin’s had, and leaving an opening open against this opponent could be lethal.

Milo descended into the ring, running over his strategy, luckily he hadn’t spent much mana in his prior match. The two aspirants stood facing each other, weapons drawn, Milo looked over his opponent, longsword ready, and as soon as Mercia called for the match to begin, Milo leapt back, channeling his mana into his senses, heightening his sight and hearing, he couldn’t afford to be blindsided by the cloaked aspirant, and so he needed to know the moment his opponent teleported. The warhammer wielder rushed forwards, shield raised, attempting to close the distance through conventional means. Milo backed up, carefully watching his opponent, matching the cloaked aspirant step for step, however, with each retreat, Milo became aware that his opponent was attempting to guide the fight towards the edge of the arena, trying to box Milo in, so, Milo took the initiative, quickly stepping into a measured thrust that forced his opponent to defend with their shield, giving Milo just enough of an opening to rotate around to the right side of his opponent, and giving himself a more open area in which to fight. The cloaked aspirant responded by rushing forwards, attempting a shield bash, Milo was about to commit to his dodge when a portal appeared in front of his opponent. Milo heard the subtle swooshing sound made by the portal as it opened, and so he sidestepped, turning into a slash aimed at the portal’s location. The attack was turned aside, but it did succeed in stopping his foe’s advance, leaving both aspirants in neutral stance facing each other. Milo stood ready for anything that his opponent would throw at him, then something completely unexpected happened.

“You seem to be playing it safe, I’m not surprised after what happened to your teammate, afterall, you wouldn’t want to end up like him, a half-assed swordsman with a stale gimmick, dead on the floor.”

The cloaked aspirant said, voice calm, Milo knew his opponent was trying to mess with him, to goad him into the same kind of clumsy attack that had ended the fight between Erwin and Charly, but knowing wasn’t enough to stop it from getting under Milo’s skin. Even though Milo had barely known him, it pissed Milo off to hear Takuma being insulted for something that was out of his control. Milo pushed his anger aside, he needed absolute focus. The cloaked aspirant stepped forwards, swinging his warhammer downwards before opening a portal, teleporting the weapon above Milo’s head, Milo intercepted the blow with his longsword, slipping his blade just behind the warhammer’s head, fending off the weapon, before backing away from the portal, ready to meet any further attack from his opponent. However, rather than pressing the offensive, Milo’s opponent simply fell back into a neutral stance. They stood neither one making a move, both ready to intercept any attempt at offense from the other. The cloaked aspirant spoke again,

“You swordsmen are all the same, boasting about technique, actions out of the bind, flowing attack sequences, on and on, but in the end, you have a series of practical, yet predictable attacks and counters that lack versatility and focus too much on countering others using the same weapon.”

Milo ignored the taunt, afterall, he agreed with the critique of several of the sword styles commonly taught in The Empire, and so Milo maintained his neutral positioning. His opponent seized the initiative, rushing forwards, bringing down his hammer over his head, before suddenly pulling back, and slamming his shield into Milo’s chest, quickly following up with a series of blows from the warhammer. Pounding on Milo’s defence, never giving an opportunity for Milo to throw the hammer aside or retreat, steadily increasing the pressure, each subsequent attack threatening to wrench the longsword from Milo’s grasp, before finally bringing the warhammer down with full force, Milo, hastily raised a block, the hammerhead impacted the longsword’s blade, a loud ping rang out, the detached section of blade from Milo’s longsword clattering to the floor. Milo stepped back, evading the follow up attack. His mind slowly processing what had happened, the months of saving. The countless hours of careful maintenance, all of the training at the academy, everything he had poured into that longsword, now wasted, the weapon that had carried him to this point lay broken on the floor. Something inside Milo snapped, his only thoughts being how best to make this fucker pay. The cloaked aspirant swung his warhammer at Milo’s head, ready to end the match in the same way that he had against Takuma, however, Milo caught the weapon’s handle, and, channeling all of his mana into his strength, Milo wrenched the weapon from his opponent’s grasp, tossing it across the arena, before grabbing the cloaked aspirant’s shield with his left hand, pulling back his right hand, and repeatedly slamming his fist into the face of the man that had broken his longsword, each blow only becoming more satisfying as he felt the facial structure of his foe shifting as he liberally applied his fist to it. Milo pulled back, channeling all of his remaining mana into a single, finishing blow to end the match, but right as he threw the punch, Mercia appeared beside him, catching his wrist, and stopping the blow.

“That’s enough, I declare this match to be over.”  
Mercia called, releasing Milo’s fist as soon as Milo released the channel, the cloaked aspirant muttered words that Milo could barely make out,

“Well, I guess this works.”

Before Milo could start to wonder what that particular statement meant, the cloaked aspirant snapped his fingers, a portal appeared behind Mercia, and a bolt of lightning shot from it, catching Milo in the chest, and sending him tumbling across the arena, a tall man stepped through the portal, he wore a scale cuirass with simple greaves and bracers, his helmet being in the standard style of the imperial military, with the exception of a metal death mask slotted in between the helmet’s modified cheek guards, a permanent expression of indifference gracing its face, on his right hand was a plated gauntlet, its fingers coming to a sharp point at the end, his left hand completely bare. 

“My, my, such promising aspirants this year, the order is sure to be thankful for them, especially with all the daemons running amok these days.”

The man’s voice was smooth and cold, giving the impression that its owner was a practiced speaker, well used to using words to either escalate or deflate any given situation. Mercia turned to face the newcomer, her voice even as she spoke, 

“Hello Kyron, it's been a while, now, I have a question for you, what are you doing here? You know, after the whole kicked out of the order thing.”

Kyron took one step towards Mercia before responding.

“I’m here to eliminate the daemon lurking in the guardian order.”

With that, Kyron raised his right hand, a jet black blade extending from the knuckles of his gauntlet, Mercia reacted quickly, drawing her sword, and dropping into a ready stance, Kyron made the first move, opening with a series of calculated slashes, testing his opponent’s guard while attempting to close the distance and negate the disadvantage provided by his shorter blade, Mercia fended off each blow before counterattacking, throwing a quick thrust aimed at Kyron’s throat, the blade connected, but passed straight through its target, inflicting no damage of any kind. Kyron laughed as he spoke

“Did you really think that I would be so careless with my actual body?”

Several jet black tendrils shot from the still open portal, Mercia reacted instantly, slashing through the first, before leaping away from the next two, and ducking under a fourth. Kyron leapt through the portal, sweeping his gauntlet to the side, lashing the attached tendrils towards Mercia, who managed to evade it by the slimmest of margins. Rolling to her feet Mercia rushed forwards, slashing at Kyron’s unarmored thighs, Kyron jumped back, recalling the tendrils and again forming the blade from the gauntlet. Kyron snapped his fingers, his body began to shimmer before seeming to duplicate several times, all of the Kyron’s rushed forwards, launching a confusing barrage of attacks, some of the bodies going for leaping thrusts only to pass through Mercia when she moved to block, while others went for more grounded sequences that hammered on Mercia’s guard, pressing her defense to the limit. Victor leapt down from the stands, and rushed towards the ongoing battle.

“Slivr, no interference!”

Kyron called, the cloaked aspirant snapped his fingers, simultaneously closing the portal that Kyron had arrived through, and opening portals above and below Victor, causing him to fall endlessly through the portals, and rendering him incapable of interfering in the ongoing fight.

Kyon continued his assault, launching a slash forcing Mercia to block before another of the Kyrons landed a punch to her side, Mercia staggered before turning to meet the evidently real Kyron, ready to meet any follow up assault. The right hand of the Kyron directly behind Mercia landed on her head, the blade disappearing as Kyron assumed a rough grip, the sharp points at the end of each finger of the gauntlet digging into Mercia’s skin, blood trickled from each of the wounds as Kyron tightened his grip.  
“Say goodbye, daemon.”  
Kyron growled, digging his fingers deeper, Mercia’s skin darkened, slowly shifting until it became the same color as the tendrils before matter was stripped away, pulled into the gauntlet, where it disappeared, eventually leaving nothing behind. Kyron dispelled the duplicates before turning to Slivr,

“It’s time I made my exit, make sure nobody follows.”

Slivr nodded, before snapping his finger, and opening a portal that launched Victor across the arena. From the now open portal exited a large group of men, nearly identical to Slivr, with the exception of being slightly shorter, they stood ready, weapons raised, all carrying a warhammer and a shield. Kyron nodded to Slivr before exiting the same way the near duplicates had arrived. As soon as he was gone, Slivr called out a single, simple order,

“Crush them.” 

As soon as Aecca heard the command she drew her blaster, ready to fire at any moment, the other aspirants readied their weapons, the newcomers moved forwards, splitting into small groups as they advanced towards the stairs that led to the stairs. Aecca decided to take the initiative while she could, firing off a shot at the closest group of mini-Slivrs, the blasts were intercepted by the shields. Well, at least I know they’re solid… wait, shit they’re actually solid, and they’re getting closer, fuck, why the hell did I waste all this time not shooting, goddamnit me! Aecca decided to make up for her momentary lapse in judgement by firing several more shots, at the now much closer mini-Slivrs, again they were ineffective.

Aecca, deciding that this whole endeavor had been thoroughly pointless, drew her swords, just as the first wave arrived in the stands, the warhammer wielding near clones proving themselves to be effective combatants, overpowering several of the remaining aspirants relatively quickly, and Aecca quickly found herself fighting side by side with Charly. The halberdier quickly showed his skill, effortlessly chaining together wide sweeping attacks into functional sequences that slashed into or knocked aside those in its way, sending several of those unfortunate enough to engage Charly tumbling over the edge of the arena. Aecca for her part was holding her own, slipping her blades past the shields of her foes, and driving them into the vulnerable torsos of her targets, no blood spilled, and yet her opponents collapsed to the floor after she landed the blows.

However, despite the efforts of Aecca and Charly, the other aspirants were slowly overwhelmed and incapacitated, slowly diminishing the group of aspirants until it was just Aecca and Charly fighting back to back, Aecca quickly found herself being overwhelmed, being surrounded hampered her ability to evade the attacks of her foes, and her lower physical strength meant that repeatedly blocking attacks quickly took a toll on her stamina. A powerful blow knocked aside Aecca’s right hand sword, she raised her left to block the followup strike, the hammer struck her blade, jolting the hilt of her weapon into her hand, pain shot from the area in which the hilt made contact, aecca cried out, dropping the sidesword, the weapon clattering to the ground. Her foe stood over her, warhammer raised.

A large spike shot from the floor, knocking the cloaked warrior back in an obvious display of creation magic. Milo leapt into the stands, hurling the mini-Slivrs into the arena, or slamming them aside with unarmed strikes empowered by healing magic.

Taking advantage of the path Milo had cleared, Charly and Aecca made their way into the arena itself, the best course of action seemed to be to make for the entrance they had used during the first phase of the test, Milo followed shortly thereafter, the three of them backed slowly towards the door to the hall. The mini-Slivrs that had been thrown over the side of the arena were starting to get back up, and retrieve their weapons, Aecca handed one of her swords to Milo, there was no point in trying to utilize it in her burned hand, and while it might not be what Milo was used to, but it was better than nothing. Milo took the weapon, and readied himself, dropping into a fencer’s stance, it wasn’t the best positioning Aecca had ever seen, but it was more than she had expected. The mini-Slivrs drew closer, moving in perfect sync, warhammers raised. Aecca’s tailfeathers brushed against the door, she turned around rapidly, grabbed the handle, nothing budged. Aecca was halfway through conveying this information when Charly turned to face the door.

“The answer to this particular peculiarity is to not use the fucking handle.”

Charly swung his halberd down, splitting one of the hinges down the center, Charly then withdrew his weapon and proceeded to kick the door off its remaining hinge, the three rushed out of the arena, and as their foes moved to pursue, Charly turned around, withdrawing something from beneath the leather strips that protected his legs.

“You know, you don’t need fancy tricks with creation magic to make a nice boom.”

Charly hurled the object, a small glass sphere filled with a silvery powder and water, the sphere shattered on impact, the powder and water collided, and exploded, the blast threw those pursuing Milo, Aecca, and Charly to the ground, and sent splinters of door sailing into those further back. The three aspirants ran down the hallway, thankfully finding that the door on the other side was unlocked, they rushed into the waiting room, and almost ran right into a group of fully armed guardians.

A few hours, and one hurried explanation later, the leading council of the Guardian Order would meet to discuss the matter of Kyron in a dark room at the center of their order’s headquarters. They all sat around the table, each lords of the order, appointed as such by the high lord and the emperor, it was a long tradition for those at the top of the Guardian order to be made imperial lords by the emperor, and for the emperor to give advice on who to be raised to the council. The figure at the head of the table began the meeting,

“Kyron has gone from an embarrassment to an outright threat to the order, his actions today have forced our hand, we must do something about him.”

A woman, seated at the far end of the table from the man that had just spoken responded quickly,

“But who would we send, before his exile, Kyron was among the strongest in the order, and after these past few years, he must be stronger still, there aren’t many in our number that can challenge him, and us, the council lords, are tied down here, we cannot leave the capital.”

Another of the council lords, a man, seated across from the previous speaker answered, his voice calm. 

“You are correct Lady Fulgeo, no members of the order who are free to move can defeat Kyron individually, however, there is a solution, the great enemy has been quiet, many of the void rifts have been closed, and more guardians are free to act than there have been the past five years, should we mobilise in force to deal with Kyron before he can cause any more damage, we can bring our fallen brother to justice.”

All was silent, each of the lords thinking over the proposal, finally the man at the head of the table rose to his feet,

“Lords of the order, are we in agreement with this plan, and ready to take on the responsibility of directing such an effort?”

No one raised their voice in opposition, and so, the order went out.

It hadn’t taken long for the guardians to force Slivr to retreat from the arena, however Slivr had accomplished his task, Kyron vanished by the time the Guardian order could move beyond their headquarters, and Slivr himself had also escaped, along with his near-duplicates.

A day had passed since the debacle at the Arena, and all of the aspirants who had made it to Kyron’s arrival during the third phase had been called together, in the same meeting room that their test had began, Victor stood before them, behind him there was a large wooden case, 

“With recent events, The Guardian Order’s leading council has decided to induct all of the remaining aspirants into the order.”

Victor turned around, walked to the case behind him, and opened it, withdrawing a bundle of cloth, Milo knew what that cloth was, it was the cape given to each new guardian upon their induction to the order, black on purple, with a gilded border, the crest of the Guardian Order in it’s center, each one was tailored to each new guardian, perfectly proportional to its owner, this was it, the culmination of all of his training and preparation, Milo nearly snatched the cape when his turn came, the clasps the cape came with were designed to function well with most types of armor, and should their owner prefer it, be worn over one shoulder. Charly and Aecca accepted their capes in turn, the aspirants all donned their capes in turn. Victor spoke again, 

“Now that you’re all guardians, there has been another decision made by the council regarding what happened yesterday, all available guardians are to act in opposition to Kyron, and work towards his capture, and as of today, that includes all of you. You are free to form teams with each other and utilize whatever strategy you wish to move towards that goal. I shall leave you to it.”

Victor turned, and left the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: That’s the end of Arc 1, I’ll now be handing the reins to one of my co-authors, fun fact, this chapter and chapter 6 were originally going to be ONE chapter, which, as it turns out would have been 14 pages long, so I'm glad that I was convinced to split it up, this has been super fun to write and plan, and I’m excited to continue this project in the future.

**Author's Note:**

> we will post 1 chapter a day when we have an ark written, this ark has 7 chapters, and then we will take a bit to write the next ark, and then post 1 chapter a day until the ark is complete


End file.
